Jesuit Robotics Gears Up for Competition

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With the year’s biggest competition in sight, the Jesuit Robotics Team hopes to take first place in this year’s season. Safety Captain Trayer Musselmen ’17 is excited to start of his spring break with the Regional Robotics Competition in Orlando. There Trayer and his teammates will compete against team from across the Western Hemisphere to cap of a succesful robotics season.

The goal of the robotics club is to build robots to complete certain task at completions. The more tasks the robots can do in a time frame, the more points that robot scores. The more points a robot and its tea scores, the better that team places at a completion.

It was in mid-January of this year when Trayer, Ms. Hescheles, and the robotics first started to prepare for this years competition. That is when the competition is announced. Jesuit Robotics and every other team from across the world are made aware of the challenges that their robot will need to overcome. There new task was to design, build, and test an entire robot in a six week period. From that moment on it was game time.

For the next couple weeks the Robotics club, headed by Ethan Gregos ’17, began to make a design for their robot and decide what capabilities they wanted to give to it. At this stage a lot of decisions needed to be made regarding the height, weight, speed, width, and length.

After the design is complete, which typically takes a couple weeks, the club will begin the build to robot. Only what you plan to happen and what actually happens is never the same. From there the team has to adjust, redesign, and find new ways to get the tasks done. All the while everyone needs to stay safe.

Exactly six weeks after the initial competition was announced in mid-January, the Robotics Teams must stop building, bag there robot, and tag it. From there they wait until this weekend to make any adjustments and to compete.

Safety is a very important part of the club according to Musselman. His role to to make sure that everyone stays safe by wearing the proper protective gear, having your hair in a ponytail, removing any ties, and not participating in any tom foolery. “I take my job very seriously.” Says Musselman.

If any person is interested in joining the Robotics Team, which is co-ed, they should email Ms. Hescheles or talk to her about it during her off periods or after school. However, Robotics takes up a lot of time during the season. From mid-January till March the team is staying everyday after school until 6 or 7 making sure the robot is finished on time. So, before you commit to Robotics make sure that you have ample free time early in the 2nd semester.